The Druid Next Door

by E. J. Russell

  Plants weren’t like people. They couldn’t refuse to drink. He laid a tentative hand on the tree’s trunk—and could swear he heard it weeping.

  Tears pricked his own eyes. “Damn them. Why are they doing this?”

  “Your guess is— Shite.” Mal’s voice dropped to a ragged whisper.

  “What?”

  He nodded past the tree to a mossy boulder. “The threshold.”

  Bryce stroked the tree trunk again. “We’ll fix this,” he whispered. “I promise.” He turned to Mal. “Why are we standing here? Let’s go.”

  Mal cocked his head, mocking again. “I should warn you, tree hugger—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Bryce tugged on the hem of his vest and settled his hat more firmly on his head. “Once we’re through the gate, you’re the boss. I know.”

  “Glad to hear it. What I was going to say, though, is you need to mind how you go.” He elbowed Bryce in the ribs. “Because, in Faerie, the trees might hug back.”

  While Bryce was still blinking, attempting to assimilate this latest bombshell, Mal urged him forward, past the boulder, and they were . . .

  Exactly where they’d started.

  Bryce whirled, his misery at the state of the wetlands and his anticipation at the otherworld journey morphing into fury. “Is this your idea of a joke? Taunting the science geek? Baiting the druid’s apprentice? Aren’t we past that by now?”

  “You see me laughing?” Mal didn’t avoid Bryce’s gaze, but was that guilt flickering across those perfect features? “Not like I’ve come this way before, now, is it?” He squinted, studying the woods around them. “Faerie is always bounded by water. Maybe we have to cross the stream.” He gripped Bryce’s shoulder, his fingers tightening to the point of pain. “Think you can stand down while we try again? Wouldn’t do to burst into an unfamiliar destination in the middle of a bloody row, right?”

  Bryce swallowed his fury. Mal had attitude to spare, but he wasn’t petty, small-minded, or cruel. He had a purpose, and he actually needed Bryce’s help. “Okay.”

  “Good man. I’ve got to keep hold of you as we cross, all right?”

  Bryce nodded and took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  They splashed into the stream, and midway across, everything changed.

  The flow of the water, the angle of light, the very air felt different. Older, as if he were standing in the same river, under the same sun that had shone on the ancient Celts when the Romans first set foot on British soil. Instead of the ever-present smell of fossil fuels, the air held the tang of wood smoke and ozone, as if lightning had just struck and ignited a fire nearby.

  And the trees—Jesus Christ, they towered overhead. “Old growth,” he murmured, peering up through the heavy canopy. He reached out to touch the trunk of an oak larger around than his LEAF, but then remembered Mal’s comment about trees hugging back and hesitated. Even so, a grin split his face. “It’s real.”

  Mal chuckled. “Got it in one, boyo.”

  Elation bubbled up in Bryce’s chest like a cauldron of joy boiling over, spilling into his veins. He turned to look back the way they’d come, and plants from a whole different ecosystem had replaced the native Oregon plants in the preserve.

  He frowned and took a step forward. That beech just across the stream . . . It was taller, broader, older by far than the crabapple in the same spot in the Hillsboro woods, but it was clearly suffering from the same wasting disease. On a tree that old, that majestic, it wasn’t just heartbreaking; it was a tragedy.

  “Mal. Look at that. The blight isn’t only on our side of the gate.”

  “Guess that answers part of the question. Whatever’s going on, it’s not only an Outer World attack. It’s happening here too.”

  “Is that why your informant sent us here? Because he knew there was a connection? Some kind of symbiosis between Faerie and the human world?”

  Mal turned and picked his way through a heavy blackberry thicket. “Could be.”

  Bryce followed, pulling the Felco pruners out of his vest pocket. He tapped Mal on the shoulder. “Can I clear a path? I won’t be . . . you know . . . dismembering anything sentient?”

  “Even in Faerie, brambles are just brambles.” He stood aside. “Have at it, mate.”

  Bryce clipped runners out of the way, careful not to take too much or disturb any more than he had to. After about ten feet, they emerged onto a dirt path almost wide enough to be called a road.

  Bryce paused to tie a yellow flag onto a branch close to where they’d emerged. “Where to now?”

  Mal didn’t answer. Instead he stood in the middle of the road, his left fist propped on his hip, peering around as if he’d never seen the place.

  “Shite. I don’t know. The bastard said I’d know it when I saw it, but I don’t see anything but—”

  “Mal.” Bryce gripped Mal’s elbow, his voice low. “Look.”

  Cowering under an elm on the opposite side of the road was a creature with the same mottled brown skin and green hair as the one they’d seen in the wetlands. Its back was to the two men, and its shoulders shook, a low keening sound drifting on the breeze.

  No wonder. The poor thing’s back looked as if someone had scooped chunks out of its flesh. Its bright-red blood was startling amid the soothing browns and greens of the forest.

  As if it could detect their scrutiny, the creature peered over its shoulder with enormous vertical-pupilled golden eyes. It bleated in distress and scrambled into the undergrowth to disappear from their view.

  “Shite,” Mal muttered. “So much for going undetected.”

  “What was that?”

  “Our bauchan. You ought to recognize it by now.”

  “But . . . when we saw it, it didn’t look as if it had been attacked by a saw-toothed ice cream scoop.”

  “No.”

  “So what—”

  “It’s been tortured in the worst possible way for its kind.” Mal’s voice was troubled. “Those divots on its back? That’s where its kits should be. Someone’s ripped them away before they were ready to be weaned, hurting the parent and possibly killing the young. There’s no reason for that, unless whoever’s giving the orders enjoys inflicting pain.”

  “Is that kind of thing—” Bryce fought a surge of dismay “—common in Faerie?”

  “Unseelie are driven by self-interest, so if the means justified the ends, I doubt they’d be squeamish. Seelie? I’d like to think we’re above torture.” He stared at the spot where the creature had vanished. “But I’ve been wrong before.”

  Running into the bauchan had been a stroke of unbelievably bad luck, not that Mal should have expected anything more from this life these days. Mal had no love for Unseelie, but it was incumbent on the higher orders of both courts to care for the lesser, especially if they were bound in service. If the condition of the poor thing’s back meant what he suspected, then its master was beyond cruel—and had failed in his covenant with Faerie. Let’s hope the bastard isn’t my new pal, Steve.

  He glanced at Bryce, who still looked as if he were trying to decide whether he’d gotten the world’s best birthday gift or had stepped into the hells’ grimmest anteroom.

  “Do you think it’s okay?” Bryce took a half step toward the bauchan’s bolt-hole. “I’ve got some salve in my pocket that—”

  Mal caught Bryce’s arm. “Even if we could catch it, which I doubt, since it knows this realm and we don’t, we don’t have the time.” He pointed to the sun, nearly overhead. “Narrow window of opportunity, remember?” Mal had his doubts about whether the same talisman that granted them access would keep them safe after its expiration date. The last thing he needed was for the Queen to discover he’d been mucking about in Unseelie lands.

  Shading his eyes with his hand, Bryce peered up at the sky, and his jaw dropped. “Christ. It’s yellow. And the sun looks twice as big as it does at home. Are we even on the same planet anymore?”

  “Same old, same old. But Faerie’s a construct, rem
ember? Here, size can be relative to importance. The elder gods were fiends for solar and lunar cycles, so this is their idea of a joke.”

  “Or a warning.” Bryce tugged the bill of his cap lower. “Right, then. Which way?”

  “I . . .” Shite, maybe they should have followed the bauchan after all. Maybe it was supposed to be their guide. Bloody Steve and his you’ll know it when you see it.

  Bryce snorted. “If your old job was tracking down fugitives, how did you find them? Stand in the middle of a road and hope they drove by and hit you with their cars?”

  “Oi. Watch the disrespect. Magic, remember?” He would have felt it, even here in the Unseelie sphere, filling him with the peace, the rightness, the belonging that was the birthright of all fae.

  But the void under his heart where his link to the One Tree used to root gaped wide, leaving him hollow, yearning for something to fill him again and give him a reason to breathe.

  “Do you even have a plan?”

  “I told you everything I know about the maneuver.” Well, not exactly everything, but anything that related to navigation.

  “Maybe you should have demanded more information.”

  Mal slapped his forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? The man is bloody brilliant.”

  “You don’t have to be sarcastic.” Bryce scowled and fussed with the zip on a vest pocket. “If someone gives you a project, it’s reasonable to expect a complete rundown of its parameters.”

  “Welcome to the world of espionage, boyo.”

  “Espionage?” He stopped faffing about with his vest and stared at Mal with wide eyes. “We’re . . . spies?”

  “We didn’t knock on the bloody front door, now, did we? But there’s no point in moaning about what we don’t have. If we don’t find the Keep within the next half hour, we might as well go home now.” A frisson of fear shot up Mal’s spine at the idea. If he gave up now, would he wake up tomorrow with no functional hands at all?

  “The Keep. Got it.” Bryce strode off down the road, dust puffing out from under his thick-soled boots.

  “Hold up. Where you going?”

  “Since the Keep clearly isn’t hanging in a tree or hiding under a convenient boulder, I’m going to that curve in the road to reconnoiter.”

  “Big words from a tree hugger.” But the man had a point. Mal checked in the other direction. The road fell away, disappearing under the canopy of the woods, but beyond it, with mist circling it like a tattered crown, was the green sweep of the hill where the Stone Circle lay, already crawling with Unseelie.

  Right, then. Not that way.

  He turned around, but Bryce had disappeared. Shite. Had he gone after the bauchan? Gotten snatched by a roving band of duergar? Why hadn’t Mal felt the tug on their blasted druid tether?

  Steve. He’d said he could increase the play of the binding. Why hadn’t Mal thought to test it before now? Bryce could be anywhere.

  He took off down the road at a run, looking for signs that Bryce had left the path to venture into the woods to commune with some random tree. He rounded the first curve in the road. Still no Bryce, although a scatter of boulders, ranging from man-sized to troll-sized, lay partially blocking the way, leading into the woods.

  Mal skidded to a stop, raising a cloud of dust level with his knees, and approached the stones cautiously. It never paid to make assumptions about rocks in Faerie. He checked behind each one, but couldn’t find any sign of Bryce.

  “Shite. Last time I go walkabout with a bloody druid.”

  “If you have something to say, by all means, don’t hold back.”

  Bryce’s voice echoed oddly among the rocks, almost as if he were . . . Mal looked up in time to see Bryce drop from a tree branch and climb down the nearest rock. He dusted off his hands.

  The burst of relief at finding Bryce unharmed lasted five seconds before it turned into outrage.

  “What the bloody hells were you doing?”

  “Looking for this alleged Keep of yours.” He jerked his thumb down the road. “Thataway. Just around the next bend.”

  “Are you out of your bloody mind?”

  “What? Because I decided that finding the Keep would require looking for the Keep? Are you angry because you didn’t think of it?”

  “No, you sodding idiot. I warned you about the trees in Faerie, and you go climbing one before you’ve been in the place for five minutes. Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?”

  “Be careful, Mal.” Although Bryce’s tone was dry, it held a bit of an edge. “I might almost think you care.”

  Bryce waited, arms crossed, while Mal spluttered. Yeah, I know it’s not me you care about. “What’s gotten up your ass anyway? You’re the one who keeps stressing our timeline. I’d think you’d be glad I’ve discovered at least a general direction to go, given our lack of a plan.”

  Mal flung his right hand out, cursed, then pointed with his left. “Do you see these rocks?”

  “Yeah. They were convenient for scaling the tree.”

  “Look closer.”

  Bryce, still on a rush from his first steps into a new world and getting a leg up on Mal for a change, strolled over to the largest stone, docking his nose against a large protuberance. “Looking. This close enough?”

  “That boulder used to be a troll, and you’re nose to prick with him right now.”

  Bryce reared back. “Wha—”

  “Who knows? Maybe a druid blowjob is all the poor sod needs to re-animate. Think of it as a public service.”

  “Screw you.” Bryce marched down the road, not much caring whether Mal caught up to him or not. At least their spectral chain didn’t seem to be present on this side of the gate.

  “Oi. How do you know that’s the right way?”

  “I told you. I looked.”

  “Why is it that you can see it but I can’t?”

  Bryce slowed his headlong pace, and Mal pulled up level with him. “I didn’t exactly see it with my eyes.” It was more like a game of hot-cold. When he faced in one direction, he felt a warmth under his sternum. Turn away—warmth fades; turn back—warmth blooms. “I just know this is the way to go.”

  “No doubt it’s another damned druid thing,” Mal grumbled.

  “Don’t knock it. At the moment, it’s all we’ve got.”

  As they continued on the path—Mal stomping along with his trademark scowl firmly in place—they didn’t see any other Faerie denizens. At one point, they heard a low roar from somewhere behind them, like the sound of the crowd at a football game. Since Mal ignored it, Bryce assumed it was nothing to worry about.

  Then, out of nowhere, a vast gate blocked the road, as if the entire Keep had been dropped there like Dorothy’s house on top of the Wicked Witch of the East.

  Bryce hoped it wasn’t a portent.

  Nevertheless, he couldn’t help feeling vindicated—and a little smug. “Voilà. The Keep.”

  “Don’t get cocky, boyo. It’s not like you built the bloody thing.”

  Exasperated, Bryce stepped in front of Mal. “I realize that, but do you suppose you could at least acknowledge that I helped get us here? If I depended on you for my self-esteem, I’d be ready to hang myself from the tree, not climb it.”

  Mal rubbed his good hand on the back of his neck. “Right. Sorry. Not at my best lately.”

  “I hope not, because if this is you at your best—”

  “Stow it. Let’s move on, shall we?”

  Bryce tilted his head back and surveyed the door. It had to be at least double the height of his house, solid oak, and hinged with heavy blackened iron. A faint image, like a hologram of a Celtic knot, glimmered in the air above the lintel. That’s not ominous at all. “Are you sure it’s deserted?”

  Mal studied the hologram for a moment, head tilted to one side, then glanced at his hand for some reason. “Absolutely.”

  At least one of us is confident. Still, there didn’t seem to be anyone around. “Do we knock?”

  �
�Hells no. If the place is deserted, who’d answer?”

  “How do we get inside, then? I have no idea how to pick a lock.” Especially one that size. The key that fit that thing must be as long as his arm.

  Mal cocked an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to be the brains of this outfit?” He set his palm against the door, shoved, and it creaked open. “Before you overengineer a break-in, it pays to try the door.”

  Bryce’s mouth dropped open. “Doesn’t leaving a fortress unguarded and unlocked sort of defeat the whole point of a fortress?”

  “Magic, boyo. Works a treat.” Mal grinned wolfishly. “Unless the other bloke’s got a better spell.”

  He slipped inside, and Bryce followed him into a vast vaulted hall. Long narrow windows pierced the stone walls up near the rafters, but most of the light came from torches set in iron wall-sconces. Their footsteps echoed on the flagged floor.

  “All right, bloodhound. Which way do you reckon?”

  Bryce was about to disclaim any knowledge of castle architecture, but the warmth in his chest had other notions. “There. Through that arch and down the corridor.”

  “Useful trait, that. Do you suppose you can find my missing spanner when we get home?”

  “Shut up,” Bryce muttered, and led the way across the room.

  The corridor opened out into another room wider than the entry hall, but just as long and high. This one was brighter, the windows wider to allow the oddly close sun to shine fully into the room. Bryce frowned. Wait a minute. The sunlight spilled through the windows on all three sides of the room. How could that be?

  He didn’t bother to ask Mal. He knew what the answer would be: magic.

  The room was empty of furniture except for a high-backed wooden throne, intricately carved and set with jewels. It sat on a raised dais midway down the long side of the room, backed by a huge tapestry depicting a single enormous tree.

  The One Tree, I presume. A tall fae stood under the tree, a midnight-blue cloak trimmed with ermine across his shoulders and one of those ornate Tudor-type crowns on his dark hair.

  As Bryce faced the throne, the warmth in his chest began to pulse like a second heart. “It’s there. The thing we’re looking for.”